Masters of the Wheat-Lands by Harold Bindloss

It was with confused feelings, among which a sense of repugnance predominated, that Agatha walked toward Hawtrey's room. She was not one of the women who take pleasure in pointing out another person's duty, for, while she had discovered that this task is apparently an easy one to some people, she was aware that a duty usually looks much more burdensome when it is laid upon one's self. Indeed, she was conscious just then that one might be shortly thrust upon her, which she would find it very hard to bear, and she became troubled with a certain compunction as she remembered how she had of late persistently driven all thought of it out of her mind.

There was no doubt that she was still pledged to Gregory, and that she had loved him once. Both facts had to be admitted, and it seemed to her that if he insisted she must marry him. Deep down in her there was an innate sense of right and honesty, and she realized that the fact that he was not the man she had once imagined him to be did not release her. It was clear that, if he was about to commit a cruel and unjustifiable action, she was the one person of all others whose part it was to restrain him.